Large format prints

[covenant]

Greetings everyone,
First of all please forgive any misspelling but English is not my native language, i'll try my best to make any sense
I allways wanted to know how those huge outdoors covering buildings and billboards are made.
Is it possible for a picture to be so much resized and maintain quality?
Can a Nikon D40 with 6Mpx print a size bigger than A3? (16.5 × 23.4 I think)
Some one told about printing studio RIP but couldn't explain what it is. Any thoughts on this one?
Best regards

 

[Mike_E]

Yes you can shoot billboards with a D40. There are programs that will do nicely or just use photoshop (CS3 or better and I think the program I'm thinking of is Genuine Fractals). I haven't tried to enlarge a 6Mpx photo but I would think with careful up-resing you should be able to get to 16x20 acceptably. Just don't stand too close.

The thing with a print that large is that they don't need fine resolution because you don't look at them from a close distance. You are lucky to be as close as 20 meters when viewing them.

As to how they are printed, there are printers that are designed to do that job. You might try google for info on them.

 

[BTilson]

Also, for any huge prints that need good detail, I think most of those are shot using medium or large format film, then enlarged from there.